Page:Dr Adriaan (1918).djvu/60

54 used to think, 'I've got him now. . . but one day I shall lose him irrevocably?' Now it has come. . . . I must accept it with resignation. . . ."

"But am I not living with you all? Have I ever been away . . . except to college . . . and sometimes on business?"

"Dear, it's not that. It's the losing each other, the losing each other . . . out of each other's souls. . . ."

"But it's not that."

"That's just what it is. . . . And it's bound to be so, dear. . . . Only, because I no longer feel any part of you in my soul, I no longer know anything about you. . . . I have known nothing about you for ages. . . . I see you going and coming—it's the patients, it's the children, occupying you . . . in turns—but what do I know, what do I know about you? . . . It has become like that gradually . . . and since . . . since you got married, it has become irrevocable."

"Mamma . . ."

"I oughtn't to talk like this, dear. I mustn't. And I should be able to overcome this melancholy, if I knew . . . that you were happy in yourself. . . ."

"Why should you doubt it?"

"I don't know. There's something about you . . ."

"Mother," he said, "how strange it is that you and Father . . ."

"Well?"

"Have never really found each other! You so often think the same things."

"Did Papa also think . . .?"

"Just now . . . almost the same as you."

"We have learnt to bear with each other, darling."